


world gone blind

by moodmaker



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - War, Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21613093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodmaker/pseuds/moodmaker
Summary: There's a name for this, he knows. A thrumming starts at the base of his spine, a kettle unleashed, heat spindling upward, licking at the tips of his ears before he whooshes out a hot breath and says, "Grandma, the ocean is at war with the sky."She hums. "And the sun?""A prize," he decides, "a spoil of war."His grandma shakes her head. "A casualty," she corrects.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan
Comments: 21
Kudos: 62





	world gone blind

**Author's Note:**

> i've been writing this on and off since august so apologies for... whatever this is. i tried something new writing-wise and i'm not sure how i feel abt it but i hope you enjoy regardless!
> 
> title from ocean eyes - billie eilish

The sky breaks first—wailing, apoplectic; it splits open with a war cry, a jilted lover’s song, one that echoes so loudly Renjun feels his heartbeat quicken in response.

He hears: an egg tapped against the side of a pot, yolk running down fingers and melting into steam, flames lapping belatedly below. He sees: the sky burst, a firecracker in August, light blanketing him in a feverish daze, the dappled face of the ocean mapping each red-rimmed bruise that it takes, blooming blips on an ever-changing radar. 

That’s where he is when it happens—rooted knee-deep in the water, waves just barely brushing against the hem of his shorts as his feet sink deeper into the sand. There’s a kind of stillness in the air, ocean empty, gulls silenced, winds deserted. Hainan is on the brink of tourist season and yet Renjun stands alone on the shore, his feet carving a watery pathway into the beach the longer he stays still. He shakes himself loose, leaving behind two misshapen caverns where he once stood.

He blinks and the ocean mirrors him, a benign smile turned smirk, too brightly-lit to look at for too long. Renjun presses a hand to the jugular of his neck, feeling around. His pulse crashes in his ears.

The light clears, and the sun is no longer there.

-

By the time he gets back, breakfast lukewarm despite his grandma’s best efforts, it’s all over the news. He fiddles with the radio perched on the windowsill, dial murmuring to life under his fingers. _Sanya was bombed at six this morning,_ the reports are saying, and Renjun can picture it so vividly—an eggshell sky at dawn, flickering out of the receiver, curving smoothly in midair. _This is an official declaration of war,_ the man on the radio says. _I repeat, this is an official declaration of war._

-

The only family heirloom Renjun carries with him is one passed on in secret, whispered into ears when the moon is full or when the tide creeps too close to the shore. It's a story, worn smooth by the way he runs his tongue over his teeth, air whistling out of him in equal measure. He doesn't tell it often, but he knows it starts like this: Jilin, years ago, clouded in snowfall so deep that trees arch out of position, spilling onto the streets, ice cracking under each new layer, snow frothing from the tips of branches like sea foam. Each day moves slowly from the last, time being set by each flicker of candlelight and each weather warning on the news. There'd been no point in trying to clear the snow but his dad popped by his door with shovels in hand anyway and they hummed a duet as they worked, something from a drama his mom had been watching last night.

It's so easy to miss: a whiz of plane jets over his head, a ring of fire standing stark against all that white, a loose bomb slipped into a family tree, a limb hacked off at its base, a boy shipped south for an island he's never seen, a winter blossomed against its will into summer.

The man on the radio, Renjun thinks bitterly, knows nothing of war.

-

Apart from tourist season, Hainan is a rather sleepy place. Pretty enough to visit, but too much sun to stay. Renjun's been around long enough that the heat no longer fazes him—a hat angled downward, cream slathered onto the back of his neck, shirt collar pulled tight, and he has no reason to fear the sun.

Except there is no sun now. The sky looms heavy in its place, maw agape, blacked out. The inside of an oyster robbed of its pearl. 

He props himself up against the bucket he'd brought, accidentally sloshing the seawater inside, keeping one eye on the fishing pole jammed tightly between the planks of the dock and one eye on the junction of the sky and the sea. Fish have been scarce these days, but Renjun can still hope. He has to hope. If the war has already snuck into Sanya's waters, then it's only a matter of time before Renjun starts seeing fresh seafood in his dreams instead of in his dinner.

He stares so intensely at the fishing pole, praying for it to jerk, that it comes as a shock when someone above him snickers, "Nice sun getup."

Renjun startles, hitting his back against the bucket with a clang, wincing as he squints upward. A couple of seconds and the image sharpens to a soldier in standard-issue ROKA uniform, sleeves pressed neatly, tufts of hair spilling out from underneath a green cap.

Instinctively, Renjun’s hand flies up to grip the brim of his own hat, eyes narrowed, mouth opened, retort dangling off the edge:_ You’re not exactly dressed for the occasion either,_ but the moment passes too quickly. The guy smirks, evidently pleased by Renjun’s implicit surrender, and disappears into line with the rest of his troop. Renjun watches him go with his head cocked, mouth souring ever so slightly.

-

He’s still thinking about it as he makes his way home, kicking idly at the sand, bucket echoing hollowly from where it crashes against his knee every now and then.

There’s a bubble of unease in his chest, tucked just below his ribs as he thinks back to the gentle curve of the soldier’s self-satisfied smirk, face tinted playfully by the army green of his cap, hair curled loosely behind his ears. He’d been pretty, in the disconcerting sort of way that funeral wreaths or sunspots could be pretty, and Renjun guesses that many a fan had been devastated to see him shipped off to Hainan. 

Still, Renjun doesn’t take kindly to the fashion evaluation.

-

He gets back just in time to ladle the last bowlful of congee from the pot, cradling it to his chest when his grandma pretends to steal it away from him.

“Your fault for being late,” she shrugs, bringing a hand up to lift her glasses higher. “What took you so long?”

_I think I know where the sun went,_ he wants to say.

“High tide,” he answers instead, rooting around for a pair of chopsticks.

There’s a name for this, he knows. A thrumming starts at the base of his spine, a kettle unleashed, heat spindling upward, licking at the tips of his ears before he whooshes out a hot breath and says, “Grandma, the ocean is at war with the sky.”

She hums. “And the sun?”

“A prize,” he decides, “a spoil of war.”

His grandma shakes her head. “A casualty,” she corrects.

-

Storm warnings never come on time anymore but Renjun’s learned to adapt. There’s a heady mix of smoke and salt in the air as he heads to the docks, and when he finally reaches them there’s a sign already slapped over the railing. _STORM WARNING: DOCKS CLOSED TODAY_. The town knows how to adapt too.

But amongst all the grey of the overcast sky, he picks out a lone figure perched stubbornly at the point where the sky melts into the sea, a muted green form so washed out that Renjun has to squint to see him. 

“There’s a storm coming,” he calls, slipping under the railing, a slow trickle of sweat making its way down his back.

The figure turns. Renjun feels his mouth harden instinctively, though he notes with a little satisfaction that the soldier looks a little worse for wear today, uniform rumpled, hair creased into an awkward angle.

“The guide never said that,” the other frowns, forehead marred by the crease of his eyebrows. His voice breaks on the last word and Renjun smirks, a slight upturn at the edge of his mouth, but the other catches it all the same.

Renjun snorts. “And you think the guide would tell you the truth?”

The guy winces, pained, as if he’d been thinking the same thing but refused to say it aloud. 

Somewhere behind them a car drives by. The sound of it is just jarring enough for Renjun to remember why he came.

“Look,” he sighs, a hand coming up to rub at his eyes. “Whatever you’re looking for, you’re not going to find it here.”

“Is that a challenge?”

Renjun stares hard at the other, at his punch-drunk blush, his eternally golden glow.

_Something’s got to give,_ Renjun knows.

“No,” he decides, and spins around before he can change his mind.

-

If there were some kind of equation, it’d go like this: an impending threat of war plus bumper sticker travel advisory warnings plastered all over the news divided by cheaper plane tickets equals Renjun downstairs alone, taking down the small _HUANG’S GUESTHOUSE_ sign tacked onto the door, a foreboding he chooses not to ignore.

But there isn’t an equation, because Renjun stopped going to school the year he left Jilin and the only kind of math that’s of any use to him now is the kind that he can do on his fingers, the kind that goes _there’s no way apples used to cost that much_ or _is this what it’s like to be bulldozed by war?_

Because it all boils down to Renjun slouched under the shadow of a market stall, the auntie who he’s bartered with for the past nine years shaking her head sadly at him, the wind slipping past him in phases and the sun so, so gone.

-

According to the radio, the next bombing is going to land further west of Sanya.

"That's us," his grandma frowns, brow furrowed darkly.

Even now through the window Renjun can see a haze of soldiers buzz past. There's been talk that the North is merely toying with them, a cat's paw swiping blindly in midair, Sanya a hollow threat. And Renjun gets it, because for all the fish-less seas and price hikes and gasoline shortages and lack of tourists, they've been okay. They get by.

He sees the soldier around every now and then but only very briefly, enough to trade a nod or a glance, maybe. From the looks of it the soldiers have been delegated to patrol duty and not much else.

Still, they provide ample entertainment for the gaggle of aunties that exercise in the park.

"Nothing like a handsome face to keep things interesting around here," one of them coos, and Renjun is left smiling awkwardly until the soldiers disappear from view.

"You can't say something like that right in front of them," he chastises quietly, but it's not serious. Everyone can feel a silhouette of time pressing against them, a countdown started by the sun. There's a quiet sense of uneasiness akin to a phone cord being cut, or an address without a home on the map, or a disputed border between countries.

And it's because of the aunties that Renjun winds up learning the name of the soldier—Donghyuck.

"Rumor has it he was drafted into the army," an auntie tells him, handing Renjun her water bottle to hold as she stretches. "It's a shame that he'll waste his face like that, dying on an island in the middle of nowhere, huh?"

Renjun jolts. "You don't really think that he'll die," he says, but the words sound empty even to him.

The auntie's responding, mouth puckered dramatically, and he leans in to hear her better until a car roars to life behind them and all Renjun ends up catching is the flash of headlights on her face.

-

The ocean is not always kind, Renjun knows. A sudden cliff edge obscured by a carefully-placed wave, a breath taken too late, skinned knees against the walls of a sinkhole, jagged rocks placed strategically to slice his ribs to ribbons, a tendril of seaweed curled around his throat, and Renjun would be a goner.

Still, there is a certain kind of pull. He's always thought so—why else do people chase storms for a living?

That's what Renjun's thinking when he stumbles upon the soldier in a rare moment of stillness. Donghyuck is down by the water, sticking close to the vantage point where the waves dissolve onto the sand, letting the foam wash over him again and again and again.

Renjun hesitates. There’s two, maybe three, hours before he has to be back for dinner. He’s been anticipating the first swim of the summer for a while, but not if he was going to have an unexpected witness. Maybe he’ll try again tomorrow.

He wrings his towel firmly, wrapping it around his neck and preparing to trek back home until he hears a snort and turns to face Donghyuck, who, from the looks of it, has been laughing at Renjun the whole time.

"What, are you scared of me?"

“Never,” Renjun scoffs, tugging off his shirt and going to join him, ignoring the ensuing catcall in spite of the heat from his cheeks.

The water's freezing, like all things abandoned by the sun. Renjun has never been a strong swimmer but he knows how to deal with the iciness at least, the shock to the system and subsequent electrified pulse that's unearthed. He lets the water sink into him as Donghyuck paddles over toward him, slowly, a searchlight magnetized to his own heartbeat.

"Haven't seen you around in a while," he pauses, smugly, as if to say _watch this,_ "Renjun."

And he shouldn't be so surprised that Donghyuck knows his name, because Renjun knows Donghyuck's, too, but there's still a blinking of eyes and an involuntary jerking of knees that the waves don't swallow fast enough, if Donghyuck's expression is anything to go off of.

The day by the docks might not have been a challenge but this nameless thing that clogs the air between them certainly is, this longing call and dawn-broken silence and the easy, effortless way memory transfers when air is its conductor and the tentative, yearning stretch Renjun feels inside of himself for something bigger, something grander, something more than a small fishing village tripwired into the middle of a fish-less ocean.

And then before he knows it, the words are tumbling out of him: "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Because the day by the docks might not have been a challenge, but there is something in Donghyuck's eye, something bright, something golden, that tells Renjun _this was worth the wait._

"Maybe," Donghyuck starts, voice breathless. The waves pull themselves back into the sea. Donghyuck pauses to watch them go before he tries again. "Maybe, it was you."

_Anything is yours if you can swallow it._ This much, Renjun knows.

He steps forward—

And Donghyuck meets him halfway.

-

It’s hard to say, how a sky moves without its sun.

It feels like: an arrow to the gut, a splinter under the nail, a flock of vultures making small talk over a body, a stakeout in dew-hemmed grass, boots seeping blood, rifle cocked, helmet cracked.

It's really just: a clack of teeth, an arm gripped tight around the edge of a collar, a loose strand of hair tickling Renjun's nose, a string of saliva connecting them as they pull apart, Donghyuck heaving for breath, grinning, eyes bright.

"This enough of a challenge for you?"

Renjun cuts him off by mouthing at the edge of Donghyuck's jaw. "Shut up," he snarls.

"Feisty," Donghyuck grins, leaning back to give Renjun more room.

War has been in Renjun’s bloodline for years and yet he’s never met anyone like this.

-

The next morning, the earth awakens.

Renjun feels it shudder to life slowly, and then all at once—a jerking kind of movement, a breath released far too late, a whale song made purely of thunder.

He tumbles off of the mattress he and Donghyuck had collapsed onto last night and into the streets, where everything glows a shade of orange that's just off-kilter enough to be jarring. The wall of heat that slams into him almost immediately makes him cough, eyes watering, all the more startling when coupled with the forced cold Hainan's endured without the sun. There's a grey fog crawling its way into his lungs, swirling inside of him with each step he takes.

It's then that he spots it—a thin black line in the sky, hovering just barely overhead. A bomber jet.

"Run," Donghyuck whispers into his ear, and Renjun is torn between wanting to turn back and look at him with his disheveled uniform and sun-drenched skin and _OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR_ kind of caution about him or to stay rooted, frozen in place. Jilin felt like so long ago.

"When in doubt," Donghyuck huffs, "get to higher ground."

Because that's where all things go when they come to an end, don't they? Higher ground. Away from the sea. Toward the sun.

And Renjun knows that they're coming to an end—a silhouette of time pressing against them, a countdown started by the sun—as if the earth halving itself wasn't evidence enough. As if Donghyuck wasn't evidence enough.

_Something's got to give._

Perhaps that something is him.

-

_JILIN, YEARS AGO_

"I don't get it," Renjun scrunches his nose. It's cold even during the summer, so he snuggles further under the blanket to get at the warmth hiding there. "Why would she leave everything behind for a guy?"

His mom smooths back his hair with a smile. "I don't think she had a choice." She points to the page, where the three goddesses are fighting over the golden apple.

"So she was a prize?"

His mom hums gently. "Casualty, more like."

“That’s not fair.” Renjun slumps down onto the couch. "They made the choice for her."

"But she goes back, see?" His mom turns the page, and Renjun looks at the picture of Helen on the boat back to Sparta. "Everything has a way of returning to its natural state. Waves always crash back to the shore. The sun always comes back to the sky."

"Maybe she liked it better in Troy," Renjun frowns.

"Maybe," his mom agrees. "But she didn't get that choice either."

-

Renjun makes a noise, low in the back of his throat.

"Donghyuck," he says, and tugs them to a stop. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you."

And when Donghyuck doesn't even protest, just turns back and rocks quietly on his heels, as if he knew this was coming, as if he was waiting for it, Renjun figures it out.

"You don't have a choice," Renjun breathes slowly.

Because they're already at the end. Higher ground. Away from the sea. Toward the sun. _COUNTDOWN: 0._

Donghyuck smiles ruefully at him.

And the world goes white.

-

The next day, the sun is back in the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know what you thought (especially because this is so different from what i normally write) and/or come find me here! ⟶ [twitter](https://twitter.com/mythsick) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/dedication)


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